A showcase between two covers

Conventional wisdom suggests that books, especially pricey art and photography books, are an endangered species. After all, who needs books when myriad images are available at the flick of a key? But even as the Internet flourishes, so does publishing, especially photography books.

This year alone, at least 10 new books by Minnesota photographers are available. Elegantly designed, beautifully printed and priced from $25 to $60, they have been published in Minnesota, Santa Fe, New York, Brussels, Belgium, and Göttingen, Germany. Their subjects are eclectic and unusual, ranging from purebred dogs to bullfights, from Minnesota's North Shore to formal gardens, from pulp fiction to child workers around the world.

"It used to be that having a book published marked your emergence as a photographer of stature, and the book was seen as a landmark," but now there's more variety in books and motives, said George Slade, artistic director of the Minnesota Center for Photography and a regular reviewer for Photo Eye, a publication and Internet site.

"In the early '80s when I became interested in photography, there weren't many more books than an average person could buy in a year, but what is available now is beyond most bibliophiles, because there are so many from small publishers, museums, universities, art and photography publishers all around the world," Slade said. "Minnesota is just echoing that expansion of the marketplace."

Several factors have sparked this florescence, including photography's embrace by museums and collectors, new publishing technologies and photographers' own initiatives. While income from books is negligible for most artists, the publications often support their careers in less tangible ways. When photographers design their own books, they can arrange images into a visual narrative that may have more emotional and psychological resonance than a single photo. Besides being a permanent record, books are portable, widely available and comparatively inexpensive.

An original photo by Minnesotan Alec Soth, for example, might cost between $5,000 and $20,000, depending on its size, subject, availability and other factors. But a Soth fan can pick up a whole book of his images for $35.

"This always comes as a shock to people, but I make no money on my books, zero," Soth said recently. "But I see them as the ultimate vehicle for showing my work because you can reproduce photos incredibly well in book form, and for me photography isn't about individual images but about the interplay among images -- and that's what you get in a book."

The museum impact

Photography's evolving stature within museums, and its acceptance as a viable and valuable collecting field, have encouraged the publishing trend.

"For a long time photography was not regarded as an art form, but in the last three or four decades that attitude has changed," said Jonathan Hollingsworth, production manager at Santa Fe's Twin Palms Publishers, a 30-year-old firm specializing in high-quality photo books. "Major institutions now collect photos as art and there is a huge market for photography books."

Acceptance has encouraged publishers to push the market into crossover topics and niche subjects. Books such as Craig Blacklock's new collection of color photos, "Minnesota's North Shore," appeal to a broad audience of nature lovers, environmentalists and others who have long admired Blacklock's pristine Sierra Club aesthetic. Lynn Geesaman's "Hazy Lights and Shadows," with its romantic black-and-white images of mostly European landscapes, should catch the eye of antiquarians, gardeners and old-fashioned romantics. And Mary Ludington's charming, sepia-toned collection of purebred-dog portraits, "The Nature of Dogs," is a perfect gift for dog lovers of all stripes.

"I am a fine art photographer, but I wanted to bring fine art to a general audience with a subject they already love," said Ludington.

Her book was published by a major New York house, Simon and Schuster, with a print run of 25,000, which is large for a photo book. But, Ludington said, "I didn't set out to do a book that would sell a lot of copies. I set out to do portraits of dogs in an original way, to make dog photos that are evocative and not tragic or sentimental."

One of the most unusual and specialized books is "Los Toros," a collection of moody, sensual images of bullfights taken by Michael Crouser, a Minnesota-born commercial photographer who now divides his time between the Twin Cities and New York.

Published by Twin Palms on thick archival paper in an elegant, linen-covered volume, Crouser's stunning images are arranged in a loosely narrative sequence that starts with the festival at the beginning of the corrida and proceeds through the dark drama of the bullfight, including agonizing images of gored matadors and dying bulls. Twin Palms printed just 2,500 copies of "Los Toros" and plans to produce 25 copies of a special $600 boxed edition with a signed photo by Crouser.

However beautiful Crouser's book is, Hollingsworth recognizes that it will be more difficult to sell in the United States than abroad, especially in South America, Spain and France where the photos were taken. "In those cultures bullfighting is a huge sport, while we Americans are more squeamish about it," Hollingsworth said. "I think there will be an audience for the book here, but it may be harder to find."

The technology factor

Previously dominated by large New York-based publishers, the photo-book field has diversified and expanded thanks to new technology. Using computers and inexpensive printing techniques, young photographers now produce small-edition books to promote their careers.

Soth's breakthrough into the international stratosphere was finessed in part by a little book of his own work, "Sleeping by the Mississippi," that he designed, produced and distributed to galleries, curators and other photo-savvy types. After it won a competition sponsored by the Santa Fe Center for Photography, "there was a kind of bidding war for the book," Slade said, and it was released internationally in 2004 by the German house Steidl. Now out of print, the book became a collector's item as Soth's reputation soared following his inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and a string of international shows that year.

Copies of Soth's original handmade mock-ups are now so iconic that one recently sold for more than $20,000 through a New York book dealer.

"I produced 50 or 60 copies of it and sold some for $40 and gave the rest away," Soth said. "It's staggering and weird to see this little thing I made at Kinko's sell for that kind of money."

Soth has subsequently published books to accompany major exhibitions or projects: "Niagara" in 2006, "Fashion Magazine" and "Dog Days Bogotá" this year.

"To have a book is immensely important for an artist," said Hollingsworth. "It is a method for them to send their work in a well-packaged form to cultural institutions and galleries. There's a certain stamp of accomplishment in having published a book, and they allow artists to have their work seen by thousands of people who don't live in New York or Los Angeles and might not go to galleries or museums to see it."

Even with such successes, Slade cautions that "a bestseller in the photo world is not like a New York Times bestseller. Print runs are still typically under 10,000, but they have great marquee value for publishers."

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431